I wonder from the outset about a couple of the ways you phrased things: 1) early trauma damaged my brain and 2) I'm so weird, I don't even have normal ptsd symptoms like everyone else.

I don't think trauma damages the brain, but I do think trauma effects it, changes it, creates neurological pathways like water over stones that can automatically cause us to process information differently and react differently to stimuli that other people find "safe." I have experienced, through therapy and body-based therapies like tai chi and meditation and mindfulness, how I can change these well worn pathways and mostly eliminate my PTSD symptoms. I don't believe anyone is damaged unless there is actually a structural change in the brain. Instead, all the literature seems to suggest the plasticity or changeability of neurological functions. Our brains and our minds were designed to heal.

And I don't think you are weird even if your response to music is statistically unusual in the sense that many people find music a coping skill. What I do think is really interesting is your choice to learn/improve your musical skills on the piano at this moment in time. In my past I've been drawn to doing things that "force" me to confront something in my past and work through it, perhaps it's something tickling at the back of the brain (which, again, wants to resolve trauma and is healing oriented as much as it also tries to protect us). The way I'd describe where you are now is in a place where you are being encouraged from within to move forward on something that may be key to resolving something or an important piece of something.

When you googled, did you try "music and the brain"? I wonder if part of what is going on for you might be that music is evoking emotions that are either themselves uncomfortable (on a subconscious level, not necessarily consciously) or memories and neither of these are well-formulated like flashbacks with any kind of precision. You can have emotional flashbacks without any physical content and you can have memories that are producing sensations that are physical without being able to name or grab ahold of them long enough to make sense of them. Are you able to sit with memories or emotions, in the sense of being able to tap into them and stay with them and see if you can articulate what is going on, or are you fight-or-flighting in response? (that's what being physically sick, which is a remnant of the adrenaline and other physical stuff that happens in the body during f-or-f seems like).

Maybe this is a goofy way to think about it, but it seems to me that somewhere along the line your relationship with music became undone and problematic, and perhaps you are now in a place where you can start to heal that. Maybe it's connected to something traumatic in a specific way, most likely just a more casual way. Maybe you want to rexperience the pleasure of it all.

Have you tried listening to "ambient" music, it's intended to be a background and thus not as emotionally evocative as classical or instrumental? Check out the category on apple music if you have access or "video game music?" On the later, there is mellow music and then there is warrior-type music that makes me kinda nuts. Maybe one or both of these might be less evocative for you.